Esteben - Marketing Site for my Shopify Studio

Project Overview:

Esteben is the two-person Shopify studio I run with Julie. I build, she leads every project from kickoff to launch. We design and build Shopify stores for independent product brands, plus websites for local businesses, and the marketing site had one job: turn "we do good work" into a quote someone can actually act on. Pricing, typical timelines, and the exact process are all on the page before anyone has to book a call.

Approach & Process:

Built with Next.js, matching the direct, no-mystery positioning the studio is selling. A few things worth calling out:

Pricing lives on the page, not behind a form. Three tiers: new stores ($4k–$7k), redesigns ($5k–$9k), and turning a finished Figma design into a working store ($6k–$12k) — each with its own typical timeline (3–6 weeks), so a visitor can self-qualify before reaching out.
The process is the pitch. Four steps, spelled out end to end: an initial info-gathering call, a written plan and fixed quote to approve, weekly private preview reviews with written updates, then launch coordination and team training. For a studio selling "no surprises," showing the actual process does more convincing than a portfolio would.
"You own the store" is a stated selling point, not a footnote, worth being explicit about since it's a real differentiator against agencies that keep clients dependent on their own accounts.
A Work section backs up the pitch. It links out to client case studies (starting with "The Studio," 2025), so the pricing and process claims have something concrete standing behind them.

Outcome & Impact:

The site is live at esteben.com and is the studio's front door, every inquiry routes through Julie via the fixed-quote form.

Questions I get a lot.

Why go back for a CS degree if you were already at $170k?

Because the work had already outrun the paperwork, and I was tired of that gap. I’d walked away from two schools already — Baruch didn’t even offer a CS degree, and by BMCC I was already writing production code, so sitting through intro classes for a piece of paper felt backwards. I enrolled at WGU in 2024, kept the full-time engineering job, and finished the B.S. in August 2026. Third school. First degree, eight years later than the “normal” path. I wanted the foundation, and I wanted to close a loop I’d left open twice.

How did you get hired without a degree?

I showed work. The first scripts were for my dad’s business in 2017, automating the data entry that was eating his week. Columbia’s coding bootcamp gave me three months of full-stack JavaScript and a cohort in 2019 — a program that doesn’t even exist anymore. PLNETWORKS hired me in 2020 on a portfolio, not a diploma. After that, each role was about what I’d already shipped: production bugs, HIPAA software, storefronts. The degree came eight years later. It didn’t open the first door.

What actually moved compensation from $75k to $170k?

Two years of shipping at PLNETWORKS, then a move to Cazton that roughly doubled it, then BrightInsight in 2022 — HIPAA-regulated software at $170k. Same skills, different rooms. The market paid for proof. I treated interviews like case studies of work I’d already done, not like a plea for a first chance.

Where are you from, and where are you now?

I was raised in Jamaica, Queens. First thirteen years in an attic. I live in Hell’s Kitchen now. The city didn’t get bigger. I just moved west of the same story.

How do you actually use Cursor and Claude?

As a tutor and a pair, not as a ghostwriter. I still read the diff. I still throw away the parts that look clever and aren’t. The tools make the boring parts faster so I can spend the hours on the decisions that have to be mine.

What would you tell someone learning to code right now?

Build something your family can use. Put it in public. Don’t wait for a school to bless the start. I dropped out twice, then finished. Both of those were the right call at the time.